Chisako Kakehi – The Grieving Widow

In December of 2013, 68-year-old Chisako Kakehi suffered the loss of her 75-year-old husband. He was found dead in his home in Kyoto, Japan. The grieving widow appeared to take it hard. After all, she had only been married for slightly more than a month. And he wasn’t the first husband or boyfriend she had buried. In fact, he was the ninth.

At first, police ruled the man’s death to be a heart attack. However, the authorities soon grew suspicious when a test of the dead man’s blood revealed lethal cyanide. That’s when the police began an investigation into the old man’s new bride, Chisako Kakehi, on suspicion of murder.

Chisako Kakehi and A Deadly Dating Game

What the authorites found was that Chisako Kakehi was heavy into the dating web sites. And, as well, they found a string of men that Chisako Kakehi had married, or dated, for money and then left quickly behind in her wake. She was eventually charged with ‘picking off’ nine elderly men, for whom she was often the sole beneficiary on their will. Reports claim that her chosen method of murder was with the use of cyanide poison, a chemical that she kept in a pot planter.

While Chisako Kakehi maintained her innocence in the whole nasty allegation of murder, the police slowly began bringing to light Chisako backlog of killings. It seemed that Chisako’s first husband died in 1994, at the age of 54. Her second husband, who she met through a dating agency, had a stroke in 2006 and died at the age of 69. A third marriage ended with her husband’s death in 2008. One year later, a boyfriend died from what was blamed on cancer.

In 2009, Chisako Kakehi’s next boyfriend died after she had slipped him some hydrocyanic acid. It would take the law a bit to connect her to this particular murder, but eventually they did.

In March 2012, Chisako’s 71-year-old fiancee died after falling off his motorbike in Osaka. The cause of death was cited as a heart attack, although blood taken during the autopsy revealed cyanide compounds.

The authorities also confirmed the Chisako Kakehi played a hand in the death of another 75-year-old man back in 2013. She poisoned his drink with hydrocyanic acid while the two were at a restaurant. He collapsed outside in the parking lot and died. From all appearances his death looked like a heart attack, but blood tests proved that assumption wrong.

She Expressed Innocence and Sorrow

She had always expressed her innocence and sorrow at the untimely deaths of her husbands and boyfriends, while at the same time happily accepting an estimated 5.38 million dollars in insurance payouts and inheritances.

If she is found guilty of nine murders, Chisako Kakehi will most likely be given the death sentence.